I could have lived here
Taken this old pile for my shell—
Turned a heavy key in the oak door
And dreamed, as others must have dreamed
Of love by a smouldering fireside.

I could have been the ghost
Who rises up to greet you
Having little else to do.
The solitary man who trudged
Through a cobwebbed garden of dead trees
The desultory remnants of orchard
Feeling the soft crackle of dry leaves
A pardon of frosty silences.

I too could have seen the mist
Miasmic in late autumn gloom
Merge with the rain in synthesis
Then rise from the rotting earth—
Like smoke
From a stubbed candle